About Rui Chafes

One of Portugal’s most prominent artists, Rui Chafes creates large-scale sculptures out of malleable iron. Ranging from abstract to representational, Chafes’s sculptures include renderings of fencing masks, coats, corsets, cocoons, beehives, and abstract forms. Other works have resembled furniture or architecture, such as Tenho Frio (I'm Cold) and Vê Como Tremo (See How I Shake)—a structure redolent of a row of confessional booths separated by gridded panels. “I do not believe in objects, but I am convinced that only through objects will I be able to show their idea,” he has said. Chafes considers the German Romanticists and the poet Novalis, who the artist has illustrated and translated into Portugese, major influences on his work.